For the first time since taking over as head coach of the Oklahoma Sooners, [autotag]Porter Moser[/autotag] held a postseason press conference. This was in light of the Sooners missing the NCAA Tournament for the third straight season.
The Sooners and Moser felt they had a pretty compelling case to be in the NCAA Tournament, seeing they were 18-6 when fully healthy. But the committee thought otherwise, with Oklahoma as the first team out of the tournament.
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Moser spoke about what the last 48 hours have been like for his team.
“This is me speaking from the heart about our guys,” Moser said. “About the devastation and the hurt they are going through. Roughly a year ago today I was reminiscing with Los (Milos Uzan), Sam (Godwin) and Otega (Oweh) yesterday. A year ago today, when guys went into the portal, who were left were Yaya Keita, Luke Northweather, Sam Godwin, Otega Oweh, and Milos Uzan. That was our roster after the portal. My incredible staff sat around and said we are going to build an NCAA Tournament team the right way with guys that represent Oklahoma.”
Moser went on to say they recruited a group of men that he would go to battle with at any time. He even admitted that every single day since Dec. 1, 2023, his young players would look at a bracket and Oklahoma would be in the field. The first time they looked up and were not included was Selection Sunday. Moser said he will not talk bad about other teams that got in and steal their joy but he will defend his team.
“I will talk about the complete hurt and how dumbfounded I am that Oklahoma was not included,” Moser said. “I have not been told a reason.”
There is no question Oklahoma surprised a ton of people by making a run at the tournament based on preseason projections. I think that is probably what hurts the most for this team, they felt they overachieved and made a run they felt was good enough.
But ultimately, they didn’t make it, which caused Moser to call the system “flawed” because of no consistency of why a team made it or didn’t make it.
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